There are some dreams you simply do not want to remember when waking up, some dreams which make you break out in a sweat, leave you exhausted and confused. As a child I often had nightmares, fragments of which remained – and remain – in my memory. As an adult I have almost no bad dreams, perhaps because there seems to be nothing going wrong in my life, perhaps because everything my brain wishes to work through in the still hours of the night is positive. So my nightmare last night came not only as a surprise, but as a form of wake-up call: something isn’t quite right and my brain, if not my waking self, knows it is there.

Thinking about the few images which remain, whether I wish to or not, I have come to a simple conclusion: it’s not exactly a nightmare, more of a warning. There is a certain amount of pressure, of stress in my life at the moment. Not in my personal life, but in the number of things that I have to do, that I wish to do, that I am doing. I am simply open on too many fronts.

Cutting down on the number of blog posts I create here relieved some of the stress that I was feeling a few months ago, even if it meant cutting down on something which gives me real pleasure. For a while that seems to have worked, but it is clearly not enough. Trying to combine all the things I wish to do – writing, publishing, blog, photography, private life – with the things that I have to do – college, tax returns, housework(!) – seems to be something of an overload for the system. What I need, I decided this morning over my first cup of coffee, is more order and less hectic. A plan for the day with a list of priorities and a list of desires. Top of the list is college, of course, closely followed by the tax returns. The college work is an ongoing matter, the tax returns just once a year – although I do have an accountant, I need to complete the books! – so the tax returns have been my thing for this weekend.

Perhaps one of the small advantages of the Easter break: time. And the downside of a bad dream doesn’t have to be a downside at all, if you remember and consider what you have dreamed. It can be a positive aspect: there is something not quite right; do something about it!

Even so, I’ll be more than content if this, or any other, nightmare wings its way elsewhere and I can get back to normal, peaceful, refreshing dreams.